“We stand outside the box, while everything is happening in there. You have to go into the box, be with the people, and then you understand what they are going through.”

Hlamulo Makelane, South African chemist, BIARI ’13

BIARI 2013: Water, Energy, and Digital Information in the Global South

The Brown International Advanced Research Institutes (BIARI) is a junior faculty development initiative that brings promising young faculty from more than 80 countries together with leading scholars in their fields for two-week intensive residential institutes every summer. "Connections and Flows," one of four 2013 Institutes, explored new ways of thinking about the social and engineering challenges that arise around water and energy in the Global South.

Among the questions considered by a multidisciplinary group of scholars:

What would make for more “socially-robust” engineering design and development in the Global South?

What engineering innovations in the Global South—whether prompted by emergencies and disasters, or by the inventive curiosity of the rural and urban young — have potential for providing new solutions useful to both “societies of wealth” and communities in need? And how can we bring those to market sooner?

How might engineering design and development in the Global South take advantage of an embeddedness in local cultures, societies, and intellectual traditions, but also increasing connectedness to globally-circulating technologies and engineering knowledge?

Other 2013 Institues included "35 Years of Advances in HIV/AIDS: What has Changed for Women?"; "Population and Development: New Approaches to Enduring Global Problems"; and "Theater and Civil Society."